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VI contents
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ESSENTIALS OF
PROFESSIONAL
COOKING
SECOND EDITION
© Dan Lipow
This is an exciting time to begin a career in food service. Interest in dining and curios-
ity about new foods are greater than ever. More new restaurants open every year.
Many restaurants are busy every night, and restaurant chains number among the
nation’s largest corporations. The chef, once considered a domestic servant, is now
respected as an artist and skilled craftsperson.
The growth of the food-service industry creates a demand for thousands of
skilled people every year. Many people are attracted by a career that is challenging
and exciting and, above all, provides the chance to find real satisfaction in doing a
job well.
Unfortunately, many people see only the glamorous side of food service and
fail to understand that this is a tiny part of the picture. The public does not often see
the years of training, the long hours, and the tremendous pressures that lie behind
every success.
Before you start your practical studies, covered in later chapters, it is good to
know a little about the profession you are entering. This chapter gives you a brief
overview of modern food service, including how it got to where it is today and
where it is headed.
Modern Technology
Today’s kitchens look much different from those of Escoffier’s day, even though our basic
cooking principles are the same. Also, the dishes we eat have gradually changed due to the
innovations and creativity of modern chefs. The process of simplification and refinement, to
which Carême and Escoffier made monumental contributions, is ongoing, adapting classical
cooking to modern conditions and tastes.
Before we discuss the changes in cooking styles that took place in the twentieth century,
let’s look at some of the developments in technology that affected cooking.
efficiently, but their usefulness depends on volume because they are designed to do only
a few jobs.
Modern equipment has enabled many food-service operations to change their
production methods. With sophisticated cooling, freezing, and heating equipment, it is
possible to prepare some foods further in advance and in larger quantities. Some large
multiunit operations prepare food for all their units in a central commissary. The food is
prepared in quantity, packaged, chilled or frozen, and then heated or cooked to order in
the individual units.
Two opposing forces can be seen at work throughout the history of cooking. One is the
urge to simplify, to eliminate complexity and ornamentation, and instead to emphasize the
plain, natural tastes of basic, fresh ingredients. The other is the urge to invent, to highlight the
creativity of the chef, with an accent on fancier, more complicated presentations and proce-
dures. Both these forces are valid and healthy; they continually refresh and renew the art of
cooking.
A generation after Escoffier, the most influential chef in the middle of the twentieth cen-
tury was Fernand Point (1897–1955). Working quietly and steadily in his restaurant, La Pyra-
mide, in Vienne, France, Point simplified and lightened classical cuisine. He was a perfectionist
who sometimes worked on a dish for years before he felt it was good enough to put on his
menu.
Point’s influence extended well beyond his own life. Many of his apprentices, including
Paul Bocuse, Jean and Pierre Troisgros, and Alain Chapel, later became some of the great-
est stars of modern cooking. They, along with other chefs in their generation, became best
known in the 1960s and early 1970s for a style of cooking called nouvelle cuisine. React-
ing to what they saw as a heavy, stodgy, overly complicated classical cuisine, these chefs
took Point’s lighter approach even further. They rejected many traditional principles, such
as the use of flour to thicken sauces, and instead urged simpler, more natural flavors and
preparations, with lighter sauces and seasonings and shorter cooking times. In traditional
classical cuisine, many dishes were plated in the dining room by waiters. Nouvelle cuisine,
however, placed a great deal of emphasis on artful plating presentations done by the chef in
the kitchen.
International Influences
After the middle of the twentieth century, as travel became easier and as new waves of im-
migrants arrived in Europe and North America from around the world, awareness of and taste
for regional dishes grew. Chefs became more knowledgeable not only about the traditional
cuisines of other parts of Europe but about those of Asia, Latin America, and elsewhere. Many
of the most creative chefs have been inspired by these cuisines and use some of their tech-
niques and ingredients. For example, many North American and French chefs, looking for
ways to make their cooking lighter and more elegant, have found ideas in the cuisine of
Japan. In the southwestern United States, a number of chefs have transformed Mexican in-
fluences into an elegant and original cooking style. Throughout North America, traditional
dishes and regional specialties combine the cooking traditions of immigrant settlers and the
indigenous ingredients of a bountiful land. For many years, critics often argued that menus
in most North American restaurants offered the same monotonous, mediocre food. In re-
cent decades, however, American and Canadian cooks have rediscovered traditional North
American dishes.
The use of ingredients and techniques from more than one regional, or international,
cuisine in a single dish is known as fusion cuisine. Early attempts to prepare fusion cuisine
often produced poor results because the dishes were not true to any one culture and were
too mixed up. This was especially true in the 1980s, when the idea of fu-
sion cuisine was new. Cooks often combined ingredients and techniques Key Points
without a good feeling for how they would work together. The result was to Review
sometimes a jumbled mess. But chefs who have taken the time to study
in depth the cuisines and cultures they borrow from have brought new • How have the following devel-
excitement to cooking and to restaurant menus. opments changed the food-
service industry: development
New Technologies of new equipment; availability
of new food products; greater
As described on pages 2–3, new technologies, from transportation to food
understanding of food safety
processing, had a profound effect on cooking in the twentieth century.
and nutrition?
Such changes continue today, with scientific developments that are only
beginning to have an effect on how cooks think about food and menus. • How have international cui-
One of these technologies is the practice of cooking sous vide (soo veed, sines influenced and changed
French for “under vacuum”). Sous vide began simply as a method for packaging and cooking in North America?
storing foods in vacuum-sealed plastic bags. Modern chefs, however, are exploring
ways to use this technology to control cooking temperatures and times with extreme precision.
As a result, familiar foods have emerged with new textures and flavors. (Sous vide cooking is
discussed further in Chapter 6.)
The Organization of
Modern Kitchens
The Basis of Kitchen Organization
The purpose of kitchen organization is to assign or allocate tasks so they can be done
efficiently and properly and so all workers know what their responsibilities are.
The way a kitchen is organized depends on several factors.
1. The menu.
The kinds of dishes to be produced obviously determine the jobs that must be done. The
menu is, in fact, the basis of the entire operation. Because of its importance, we devote a
major section of Chapter 4 to a study of the menu.
2. The type of establishment.
The major types of food-service establishments are as follows:
• Hotels
• Institutional kitchens
Schools
Hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care institutions
Retirement community and assisted living facilities
Employee lunchrooms and executive dining rooms
Airline catering
Military food service
Correctional institutions
• Private clubs
• Catering and banquet services
• Fast-food restaurants
• Carry-out or take-out food facilities, including supermarkets
• Full-service restaurants
• Private homes (personal chefs)
3. The size of the operation (the number of customers and the volume of food served).
4. The physical facilities, including the equipment in use.
1. The chef is the person in charge of the kitchen. In large establishments, this person has
the title of executive chef. The executive chef is a manager who is responsible for all as-
pects of food production, including menu planning, purchasing, costing, planning work
schedules, hiring, and training.
2. If a food-service operation is large, with many departments (for example, a formal din-
ing room, a casual dining room, and a catering department), or if it has several units
in different locations, each kitchen may have a chef de cuisine. The chef de cuisine
reports to the executive chef.
3. The sous chef (soo shef ) is directly in charge of production and works as the assistant to
the executive chef or chef de cuisine. (The word sous is French for “under.”) Because the
executive chef’s responsibilities may require a great deal of time in the office, the sous
chef often takes command of the actual production and the minute-by-minute supervi-
sion of the staff.
4. The station chefs, or chefs de partie, are in charge of particular areas of production. The
following are the most important station chefs.
• The sauce chef, or saucier (so-see-ay), prepares sauces, stews, and hot hors
d’oeuvres, and sautés foods to order. This is usually the highest position of all the
stations.
• The fish cook, or poissonier (pwah-so-nyay), prepares fish dishes. In some kitchens,
this station is handled by the saucier.
• The vegetable cook, or entremetier (awn-truh-met-yay), prepares vegetables, soups,
starches, and eggs. Large kitchens may divide these duties among the vegetable cook,
the fry cook, and the soup cook.
• The roast cook, or rôtisseur (ro-tee-sur), prepares roasted and braised meats and
their gravies and broils meats and other items to order. A large kitchen may have a
separate broiler cook, or grillardin (gree-ar-dan), to handle the broiled items. The
broiler cook may also prepare deep-fried meats and fish.
• The pantry chef, or garde manger (gard mawn-zhay), is responsible for cold foods,
including salads and dressings, pâtés, cold hors d’oeuvres, and buffet items.
• The pastry chef, or pâtissier (pa-tees-syay), prepares pastries and desserts.
• The relief cook, swing cook, or tournant (toor-nawn), replaces other station heads.
• The expediter, or aboyeur (ah-bwa-yer), accepts orders from waiters and passes
them on to the cooks on the line. The expediter also calls for orders to be finished
and plated at the proper time and inspects each plate before passing it to the dining
room staff. In many restaurants, this position is taken by the head chef or the sous
chef.
5. Cooks and assistants in each station or department help with the duties assigned to
them. For example, the assistant vegetable cook may wash, peel, and trim vegetables.
With experience, assistants may be promoted to station cooks and then to station
chefs.
Skill Levels
The preceding discussion is necessarily general because there are so many kinds of kitchen
organizations. Titles vary also. The responsibilities of the worker called the second cook, for
example, are not necessarily the same in every establishment. Escoffier’s standardized system
has evolved in many directions.
One title that is often misunderstood and much abused is chef. The general public tends
to refer to anyone with a white hat as a chef, and people who like to cook for guests in their
homes refer to themselves as amateur chefs.
Strictly speaking, the term chef is reserved for one who is in charge of a kitchen or a part
of a kitchen. The word chef is French for “chief” or “head.” Studying this book will not make you
a chef. The title must be earned by experience not only in preparing food but also in manag-
ing a staff and in planning production. New cooks who want to advance in their careers know
they must always use the word chef with respect.
Skills required of food production personnel vary not only with the job level but also with
the establishment and the kind of food prepared. The director of a hospital kitchen and the
head chef in a luxury restaurant need different skills. The skills needed by a short-order cook
in a coffee shop are not exactly the same as those needed by a production worker in a school
cafeteria. Nevertheless, we can group skills into three general categories:
1. Supervisory. The head of a food-service kitchen, whether called executive chef, head chef,
working chef, or dietary director, must have management and supervisory skills as well as
a thorough knowledge of food production. Leadership positions require an individual
who understands organizing and motivating people, planning menus and production
procedures, controlling costs and managing budgets, and purchasing food supplies and
equipment. Even if he or she does no cooking at all, the chef must be an experienced
cook in order to schedule production, instruct workers, and control quality. Above all, the
chef must be able to work well with people, even under extreme pressure.
2. Skilled and technical. While the chef is the head of an establishment, the cooks are the
backbone. These workers carry out the actual food production. Thus, they must have
knowledge of and experience in cooking techniques, at least for the dishes made in their
own department. In addition, they must be able to function well with their fellow work-
ers and to coordinate with other departments. Food production is a team activity.
3. Entry level. Entry-level jobs in food service usually require no particular skills or experi-
ence. Workers in these jobs are assigned such work as washing vegetables and prepar-
ing salad greens. As their knowledge and experience increase, they may be given more
complex tasks and eventually become skilled cooks. Many executive chefs began their
careers as pot washers who got a chance to peel potatoes when the pot sink was empty.
Beginning in an entry-level position and working one’s way up with experience is the
traditional method of advancing in a food-service career. Today, however, many cooks are
graduates of culinary schools and programs. But even with such an education, many new
graduates begin at entry-level positions. This is as it should be and certainly should not be
seen as discouragement. Schools teach general cooking knowledge, while every food-service
establishment requires specific skills according to its own menu and its own procedures. Ex-
perience as well as theoretical knowledge is needed to be able to adapt to real-life working
situations. However, students who have studied and learned well should be able to work their
way up more rapidly than beginners with no knowledge at all.
T e r m s for R e v ie w
Marie-Antoine Carême sous chef tournant
Georges-Auguste Escoffier station chef expediter
nouvelle cuisine saucier aboyeur
sustainable agriculture poissonier working chef
fusion cuisine entremetier line cook
sous vide rôtisseur short-order cook
chef grillardin breakfast cook
executive chef garde manger
chef de cuisine pâtissier
10
Sanitation
Rules of personal hygiene and sanitary food handling were not invented just to make your life
difficult. There are good reasons for all of them. Instead of starting this chapter with lists of rules,
we first talk about the causes of food-borne diseases. Then, when we get to the rules, you will
understand why they are important. This will make them easier to remember and to practice.
The rules presented in this chapter are basic guidelines only. Local health departments
have more detailed regulations. All food-service operators are responsible for knowing the
health department regulations in their own city and state.
The information presented here is practical as well as theoretical. It should not merely be
learned but also put to use systematically. One effective system food-service establishments
can use to ensure food safety is the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system.
This practical program identifies possible danger points and sets up procedures for corrective
action. HACCP is introduced later in this chapter.
Food Hazards
Preventing food-borne illness is one of the most important challenges facing every food-
service worker. In order to prevent illness, a food worker must understand the sources of
food-borne disease.
Most food-borne illness is the result of eating food that has been contaminated. To
say a food is contaminated means it contains harmful substances not originally present in
it. In other words, contaminated food is food that is not pure. In this section, we first discuss
the various substances that can contaminate food and cause illness. Afterward, we consider
how these substances get into food to contaminate it and how food workers can prevent
contamination and avoid serving contaminated food.
Any substance in food that can cause illness or injury is called a hazard. Food hazards
are of four types:
1. Biological hazards
2. Chemical hazards
3. Physical hazards
4. Allergens
Notice it was said most food-borne illness is caused by eating food contaminated with
foreign substances. Some illness is caused not by contaminants but by substances that occur
naturally in foods. These include plant toxins (toxin means “poison”), such as the chemicals
in poisonous mushrooms, and certain natural food components to which some people are
allergic. This section considers all these kinds of food hazards.
Pathogens
The most important kind of biological hazards to consider are microorganisms. A
microorganism is a tiny, usually single-celled organism that can be seen only with a
microscope. A microorganism that can cause disease is called a pathogen. Although these
organisms sometimes occur in clusters large enough to be seen with the naked eye, they are
not usually visible. This is one reason why they can be so dangerous. Just because food looks
good doesn’t mean it is safe.
Four kinds of microorganisms can contaminate food and cause illness:
1. Bacteria
2. Viruses
3. Fungi
4. Parasites
Most food-borne diseases are caused by bacteria, so most of our attention in this chapter
is focused on them, but the other types can be dangerous as well. Many of the measures we
take to protect food from bacteria also help prevent the other three kinds of microorganisms.
Bacteria
Bacteria are everywhere—in the air, in the water, in the ground, on our food, on our skin,
inside our bodies. Scientists have various ways of classifying and describing these bacteria. As
food workers, we are interested in a way of classifying them that may be less scientific but is
more practical to our work.
1. Harmless bacteria. Most bacteria fall into this category. They are neither helpful nor
harmful to us. We are not concerned with them in food sanitation.
2. Beneficial bacteria. These bacteria are helpful to us. For example, many live in the in-
testinal tract, where they fight harmful bacteria, aid the digestion of food, and produce
certain nutrients. In food production, bacteria make possible the manufacture of many
foods, including cheese, yogurt, and sauerkraut.
3. Undesirable bacteria. These are the bacteria that are responsible for food spoilage. They
cause souring, putrefying, and decomposition. These bacteria may or may not cause disease,
but they offer a built-in safety factor: They announce their presence by means of sour odors,
sticky or slimy surfaces, and discoloration. As long as we use common sense and follow the
rule that says, “When in doubt, throw it out,” we are relatively safe from these bacteria.
We are concerned with these bacteria for two reasons:
•Food spoilage costs money.
•
Food spoilage is a sign of improper food handling and storage. This means the next
kind of bacteria is probably present.
4. Disease-causing bacteria, or pathogens. These are the bacteria that cause most food-
borne illness, the bacteria we are most concerned with.
Pathogens do not necessarily leave detectable odors or tastes in food. In other words,
you can’t tell if food is contaminated by smelling, tasting, or looking at it. The only way to
protect food against pathogenic bacteria is to use proper hygiene and sanitary food-handling
and storage techniques.
Each kind of bacterial pathogen causes disease in one of three ways:
1. Intoxications are caused by poisons (toxins) the bacteria produce while they are grow-
ing in the food, before it is eaten. It is these poisons, not the bacteria themselves, that
cause the diseases.
2. Infections are caused by bacteria (or other organisms) that get into the intestinal
system and attack the body. Disease is caused by the bacteria themselves as they
multiply in the body.
3. Toxin-mediated infections are also caused by bacteria that get into the body and
grow. Disease is caused by poisons the bacteria produce as they grow and multiply in the
body. Most food-borne diseases are toxin-mediated infections.
Bacterial Growth
Bacteria multiply by splitting in half. Under ideal conditions for growth, they can double in
number every 15 to 30 minutes. This means that one single bacterium could multiply to one
million in less than six hours!
temperature danger zone. Until recently, these temperatures were also the standard in
the United States. Bacteria and pH
4. Acidity or alkalinity. In general, disease-producing bacteria like a neutral environment, In general, food-borne pathogens
neither too acidic nor too alkaline (see sidebar top left). The acidity or alkalinity of a sub- grow best in an environment with a
stance is indicated by a measurement called pH. The scale ranges from 0 (strongly acidic) pH of 4.6 to 10. Every type of bacte-
to 14 (strongly alkaline). A pH of 7 is neutral. Pure water has a pH of 7. ria is different, however, and some
5. Oxygen. Some bacteria require oxygen to grow. These are called aerobic. Some bacte- grow when there is a higher or lower
ria are anaerobic, which means they can grow only if there is no air present, such as in pH than this range. Salmonella bac-
metal cans. Botulism, one of the most dangerous forms of food poisoning, is caused by teria, for example, can grow when
there is a pH of 4.1 to 9.0. In general,
anaerobic bacteria. A third category of bacteria can grow either with oxygen or without
however, acidity is an enemy of bac-
it. These bacteria are called facultative. Most bacteria in food that cause disease are
terial growth.
facultative.
6. Time. When bacteria are introduced to a new environment, they need time to adjust to
their surroundings before they start growing. This time is called the lag phase. If other
conditions are good, the lag phase may last one hour, or somewhat longer.
If it weren’t for the lag phase, there would be much more food-borne disease than
there is. This delay makes it possible to have foods at room temperature for very short
periods in order to work on them.
Foods that are not potentially hazardous include dried or dehydrated foods, foods that
are strongly acidic, and commercially processed foods that are still in their original unopened,
sealed containers.
Locomotion
Bacteria can move from place to place in only one way: They must be carried. They can’t move
on their own.
Foods can become contaminated by any of the following means:
Hands Air
Coughs and sneezes Water
Other foods Insects
Equipment and utensils Rats and mice
II
Thus did the shadows close in on the Jeffersonians. The blow was
staggering. On the appearance of the damaging documents, most of the
Democratic papers were silent, while printing them in full. One made a
brave show of satisfaction by criticizing Adams for withholding them so
long, and suggesting that perhaps ‘the most important papers’ had been
withheld.[1412] Even the buoyancy of Jefferson suffered a momentary
collapse. Writing Madison the day the papers were read, he did not have the
heart to indicate the nature of their contents.[1413] The next day he had
recovered sufficiently to write that his first impressions were ‘very
disagreeable and confused,’ and that this would be the first impression of the
public. A more mature consideration, he thought, would disclose no new
ground for war, but war psychology and fear of false imputations might
drive the people to the war hawks.[1414] Madison, equally astonished,
thought Talleyrand’s conduct ‘incredible,’ not because of its ‘depravity,
which, however heinous, is not without example,’ but because of its
‘unparalleled stupidity.’[1415] Monroe, who had spent the night with
Madison in Virginia, thought the incident ‘evidently a swindling
experiment,’ which was clear enough on its face.[1416] The public, in the
meantime, was reading one of the most grotesque stories of political infamy
and personal cupidity on record. The envoys had been treated with contempt,
refused an audience, insulted by unofficial blackmailers sent by the
unscrupulous Talleyrand to demand a loan for France and, more particularly,
a bribe for himself. The envoys had conducted themselves with becoming
dignity and spirit. ‘Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute,’ was a
clarion call to battle. The pride of the people was touched, and overnight the
political complexion of the country had been changed. A wave of hysterical
patriotism swept over the Nation, and the war hawks set to work to turn it
into frenzy. It was now or never.
III
For once John Adams was on top of the world. He who had so longed for
popularity had found it. Everywhere, in cities, on Southern plantations,
under the primeval forests of the frontiers, men were wildly waving flags
and saluting the President. Addresses pledging life and fortune poured in to
be prominently printed in the papers, and nowhere more than in the
Jeffersonian States.[1417] Most were the spontaneous expressions of an
excited people, some were unquestionably engineered by the politicians.
[1418] But on the surface the country was aflame. Down the Philadelphia
streets one day swung twelve hundred young men, keeping step to martial
music, the streets lined with the cheering populace, and, as ‘Porcupine’
observed, with ‘every female in the city whose face is worth looking at’
gladdening ‘the way with her smiles.’[1419] At Adams’s house the little man,
who had always wanted to be a warrior, appeared on the steps to greet them,
wearing a cockade, in full military regalia, his sword dangling at his side.
Intoxicated by the adulation, he plunged impetuously into a denunciation of
France and its Revolution.[1420] Madison thought his language ‘the most
abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of a first magistrate
of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary
patriot.’[1421] Aroused by the philippic of the President, the young men
spent the day marching the streets, and in the evening wined and dined until
ten o’clock, when they sallied forth to exercise their patriotism in deeds of
violence. The Terror had begun. Reeling and shouting, they bore down upon
the home of Bache. With only women and children in the house, they fell in
right gallant fashion on the doors and windows and were making headway
when the neighbors interfered and sent the drunken youngsters upon their
way.[1422] But with the war hawks, the attack on the home of Bache was not
least among the virtues of the mob, and the Federalist press was unstinted in
its praise.
Then, on May 9th, came the day of fasting and prayer, set by Adams in
happy ignorance that when he yielded to the importunities of Pickering for a
proclamation, he was again acting under the direction of the hated Hamilton.
[1423] The President had worked himself into a morbid state of mind. Some
mysterious wag had sent him a warning that the city would be burned that
night. The Jeffersonians smiled and shrugged their shoulders, and one editor
suggested that, since the conflagration was promised for the fast day, ‘the
incendiaries meant political or ecclesiastical fire.’[1424] But Adams, taking it
seriously, saw conspirators all about, incendiaries, assassins. Determined to
die resisting at his post, he had his servants carry arms and ammunition into
the house by the back way to withstand a siege.
The day was quiet enough, with business suspended and the churches
filled. Preachers pounced upon the Democrats and infidels with demoniac
fury. But in the evening the Terror came—and even as an old man Adams
could recall it only with a shudder. The Administration papers of the time,
eager to paint the picture black, could find nothing serious to report,
however. A few butcher boys, none the wiser for drink, exercised their lungs
in the State House yard until the soldiers swept down upon them, arresting a
few who were dismissed on the morrow, and frightening the others home.
[1425] But that was not the only mob that roved the streets that night. The
patriots had their inning, too, smashing the windows of Bache’s house and
smearing the statue of that filthy Democrat, Benjamin Franklin, with mud
from the gutters. The war propagandists fairly fluttered with activity.
Hopkinson’s new song, ‘Hail Columbia,’ was wildly cheered at the theaters,
much to the disgust of the Democrats, who resented the complimentary
reference to Adams,[1426] and, when the author was soon given a
Government position, it was suggested that Hopkinson had certainly ‘written
his song to the right tune.’[1427] When Fox the actor sang the song at the
theater in Baltimore, it was observed that ‘some Jacobins left the
room.’[1428] Even this hysteria did not satisfy the war hawks who stood in
the wings beating tom-toms and crying, ‘War! War! War!’ Hamilton was
urging Washington ‘under some pretext of health’ to tour Virginia and North
Carolina to give occasion for dinners and warlike addresses. From his retreat
at Dedham, Fisher Ames was writing nervously to Pickering that ‘we must
make haste to wage war or we shall be lost.’[1429] Hopkinson, the song-
writer, observing the serenity of New York, was wishing that he were a
despot that he might ‘order the whole city to undergo the Turkish ceremony
of the bastinado’ and ‘rouse the lazy drones with a whip.’[1430] In far-off
Lisbon, William Smith was nauseated with ‘the old womanish whining about
our reluctance to war.’[1431]
Then John Marshall returned and the tired voices of the shouters found a
tonic. Out to Kensington they went to meet him, sour-visaged Pickering in a
carriage looking stern and warlike despite his spectacles, three companies of
cavalry on prancing steeds, citizens and Congressmen in conveyances or on
horseback. Long before the town was reached, ‘the streets and windows,
even the housetops in many instances, were crowded with people.’[1432] The
bells in the steeple of Christ Church began to peal, and peal they did far into
the night. The reverberations of cannon mingled with the huzzas of the
populace as the procession moved slowly on through as many streets as
possible to the City Tavern. ‘All this was to secure him to their views that he
might say nothing that would oppose the game they were playing,’ Jefferson
wrote Madison.[1433] The next morning the war party thronged the tavern, a
dinner was given, and there was much satisfaction when Jefferson, who had
called, was unable to see the hero.[1434] Livingston, who had accompanied
Marshall from New York, had been assured that France had no thought of
war, but soon stories were afloat through the city, as emanating from the
envoy, of a contradictory nature.[1435]
Again the prancing of cavalry in the streets when Marshall departed for
Virginia—a series of ovations all the way.[1436] Then Pinckney returned—
and more pageants. Soldiers and citizens vied at Princeton and Trenton, and
a dinner was given and the French damned.[1437] All the time the country
was being overwhelmed with propaganda such as it had never known before.
Hamilton was writing his bitter invectives against the French,[1438] in which
France was ‘a den of pillage and slaughter’ and Frenchmen ‘foul birds of
prey.’ These letters, running in Fenno’s paper, alarmed Jefferson, who wrote
to prod Madison from the lethargy of retirement. ‘Sir, take up your pen
against this champion. You know the ingenuity of his talents, and there is not
a person but yourself who can foil him. For heaven’s sake, then, take up your
pen and do not desert the public cause entirely.’[1439] But even more
damaging than the pen of Hamilton was that of William Cobbett, ‘Peter
Porcupine.’ As a manufacturer of horrors he makes the wildest
propagandists of the World War pale like a candle held against the sun.
Childishly happy was the ‘Porcupine’ of those days when he could fight, on
American soil, ‘for his country’ and his King. Thus ‘the sans-culottes’ had
‘taken vessels off the bar at Charleston’ and the French had landed and were
plundering farmhouses.[1440] Thus a French invasion plot was discovered.
‘Porcupine’ had the particulars. The negro slaves were to be armed and used
as allies against the whites. ‘What a pretty figure Nicholas and Giles will
cut,’ wrote the jubilant Peter, ‘when Citizen Pompey and Citizen Cæsar shall
have tied their hands behind them.... Could its miseries be confined to these,
I would say, God hasten it.’[1441] ‘Gaunt Gallatin’ working hard all night?
Useless, useless—‘war, frightful war there will be in spite of all his teeth and
his nails too.’[1442] And then again, the invasion. Rumor had it that the
French were buying three thousand stand of arms for the West Indies. ‘That
these arms were bought for Virginia and Georgia is much more likely,’
commented ‘Porcupine.’ ‘Take care, take care, you sleepy southern fools.
Your negroes will probably be your masters this day twelve month.’[1443]
‘Extra!’ ‘Extra!’ ‘Startling News from Virginia’—‘these villians have
actually begun to tamper with our negroes.’ An ‘ill-looking fellow on
horseback’ had been seen talking with some slaves. It was understood he had
come from Philadelphia, and the ruffian was a refugee from English justice
in Ireland.[1444] And then, another lurid article on ‘Horrors of a French
Invasion,’ with bloodcurdling pictures of the outraging of American wives
and daughters.[1445]
The French invasion at hand—slaves armed—masters murdered in their
beds—churches burned—women outraged—girls kidnaped—horrors piled
on horrors, and all because of democracy. Little wonder that the
apprehensive Adams, who temperamentally sniffed treachery in every
breeze, all but trembled as he turned the pages of his ‘Porcupine’ that year.
In Boston the presses were kept busy turning out Harper’s war speech,[1446]
and Cabot was spurring Harper on to greater efforts. There, too, the rabid
war speech of a Harvard professor made on Fast Day in Brattle Street was
being published as a pamphlet,[1447] and the clergy were urging the hate of
French democracy as a Christian duty, and converting their pulpits into
pedestals of Mars. Dr. Tappan of Boston was making political harangues that
Federalist politicians were praising,[1448] and Father Thayer was clamoring
for slaughter in pious accents.[1449] Sometimes Democratic members of
congregations who sought Christ instead of Cæsar in the temples indignantly
left, and on one occasion an audacious and irreverent Jeffersonian paused on
his way out to exclaim in Latin, ‘Why so much anger in the heart of a
divine?’[1450] Nor were some of the war propagandists on the Bench to be
outdone by those in the pulpit. Judge Rush was thundering vituperative
phrases at the French in a charge to a jury.[1451] Chief Justice Dana of
Massachusetts phrased one of his charges like a participant in a
congressional party scrimmage.[1452] Much earlier, Chief Justice Ellsworth
of the United States Supreme Court made a grand jury charge the occasion
for an amazing attack on the Jeffersonian Party.[1453] As early as May,
Jefferson was utterly disheartened by the ‘war spirit worked up in the
town.’[1454] By June he was writing Kosciusko that he thought war ‘almost
inevitable.’[1455] In August he felt that ‘there is no event however atrocious
which may not be expected,’ and was promising to meet the Maratists ‘in
such a way as shall not be derogatory either to the public liberty or my own
personal honor.’[1456]
The country was rushing toward the Terror, with the war party rattling
sabers and threatening their opponents with violence. ‘Porcupine’ was
predicting gleefully that ‘when the occasion requires, the Yankees will show
themselves as ready at stringing up insurgents as in stringing onions.’[1457] It
was an open season for physical assaults on Jeffersonian editors and Bache
was being attacked in his office,[1458] and another assailant who had sought
to murder him found his fifty-dollar fine paid by the politicians when he
proffered the money, and Adams sent him on a mission to Europe.[1459] The
Federalists, for the moment, were cocks of the walk, and even Hamilton was
rushing into print with a letter that would have endeared him to the Three
Musketeers. A nondescript had referred in the press to his ambition and his
affair with Mrs. Reynolds. Ludicrously interpreting it as a threat of
assassination because of a reference to Cæsar, Hamilton lost his head and
published a signed statement promising that the ‘assassin’ would ‘not find
me unprepared to repel attack.’[1460] This childish boast played into the
hands of the obscure assailant, who replied: ‘Armed with a cane (whether
with a sword therein I cannot say) you walk about, prepared, you say, to defy
attack. By this you fall beneath resentment and excite my pity.’[1461] A few
days later he was writing of ‘the declaration made in company’ by ‘a Mr.
Patterson, a clerk to Alexander Hamilton,’ that the writer would be
murdered, and offering five hundred dollars reward for the apprehension of
the prospective assassin.[1462] Wild days, wild days!
This was the temper in which Congress resumed its deliberations after the
publication of the X Y Z papers. Jefferson advised his followers to seek an
adjournment to permit the members to consult the people, and had this
procedure been adopted the Federalists might have escaped the pitfalls to
which they were reeling.[1463] The Democrats in the streets were cowed and
only the most audacious met threats with bravado or courage. The braves of
Tammany at a public dinner drank to the toast: ‘May the old Tories and all
who wish to engage the United States in a war with any nation, realize the
felicity they anticipate by being placed in the front of the first battle.’[1464]
The Boston ‘Chronicle’ was publishing letters from ‘Benedict Arnold’
offering his services in the war for England, and rejoicing ‘to hear that so
many of my countrymen have shaken off their delusion, as I predicted they
would only eighteen years ago.’[1465] Day after day it published Josiah
Quincy’s speech, made in 1774, against standing armies. Soon it was calling
attention to profiteering of war patriots in Boston who had a monopoly on
Raven’s Duck which would be wanted for tents.[1466]
III
But the Democratic leaders required all their courage to stand up before
the fusillade—Jefferson most of all. With the Philadelphia streets filled with
swaggering young men in uniforms, many nights he heard ‘The Rogue’s
March’ played beneath his windows. Bitter, threatening letters burdened his
mail. Spies crept to his dinner table to pick up the stray threads of casual
conversation that could be given a sinister twist, and he was forced to deny
himself to all but his most intimate friends.[1467] When forced to appear in
company, he simulated an abstracted silence, ignored personal affronts, and
talked calmly when at all. ‘All the passions are boiling over,’ he wrote in
May, ‘and he who would keep himself cool and clear of the contagion is so
far below the point of ordinary conversation that he finds himself isolated in
every society.’[1468] Convinced that even his correspondence was tampered
with, he no longer dared write freely in letters entrusted to the mails.[1469]
Spies dogged his footsteps and kept guard at his door.[1470] When on a visit
to Virginia he accepted an entertainment on Sunday, the floodgates were
opened upon him, and his enemies boasted that ‘this fact has been trumpeted
from one end of the country to the other as irrefutable proof of his contempt
for the Christian religion, and his devotion to the new religion of
France.’[1471] Sad that Rufus King and Christopher Gore had continued their
English tour on Sunday, and too bad that the Federalists persisted in holding
their political caucuses in Boston on Sunday evenings, retorted the
‘Independent Chronicle.’[1472]
No dinner of the war party was complete without an insulting toast on
Jefferson. ‘Jefferson—May he deserve better of his country than he has
hitherto done.’[1473] ‘The Vice-President—May his heart be purged of
Gallicism in the pure fire of Federalism or be lost in the furnace’—with
groans.[1474] ‘John Adams—May he like Samson slay thousands of
Frenchmen with the jaw bone of Jefferson.’[1475] And in the midst of the
mobbing, the self-contained philosopher kept his mouth shut and his feet
upon the ground. With ‘The Rogue’s March’ ringing in his ears he was able
to write a long letter on the value of crop rotation;[1476] another on a plough
he had invented;[1477] and in the midst of the Sedition Bill debate, learning
that an acquaintance was going west of the Mississippi where wild horses
roved the plains, he sent the suggestion that this was ‘the last opportunity to
study them in a state of nature,’ and requesting him to prepare a report for
the Philosophical Society.[1478] Many days found him alone in the library of
this Society, and once, during that hectic summer, he stole away from the
turmoil and hate to the beautiful country home of the Logans where he could
forget the bitterness of the battle browsing in its great library or lounging
beneath its majestic trees.[1479]
Everywhere the Democrats were fair game for persecution. Matthew
Lyon found a band playing ‘The Rogue’s March’ in front of his tavern at
Trenton and New Brunswick where crowds shouted imprecations.[1480] In
New York, only the appearance of fighting Irish friends prevented the war
hawks from serenading Edward Livingston’s home with the offensive
March.[1481] In Boston the ‘patriots’ expelled Thomas Adams, editor of the
‘Chronicle,’ from the Fire Society of which he had been a faithful member
for fourteen years.
IV
Bad as was the Alien Law, it did not approach the viciousness of the
Sedition Act; and the Sedition Bill as passed was mild compared with the
one the Federalist leaders in the Senate originally framed. Albeit America
and France were not at war, the bill declared the French people enemies of
the American people, and that any one giving the former aid and comfort
should be punishable with death. A strict enforcement of such an act would
have sent Jefferson to the gallows. Under the Fourth Article any one
questioning the constitutionality or justice of an Administration measure
could be sent to herd with felons. It would have sealed the lips of members
of Congress.
When this monstrous measure reached Hamilton, he was dumbfounded at
the temerity and brutality of his followers. Grasping his pen, he hurriedly
sent a note of warning to Wolcott. There were provisions that were ‘highly
exceptionable’ that would ‘endanger civil war.’ He hoped that ‘the thing will
not be hurried through.’ Why ‘establish a tyranny?’ Was not ‘energy a very
different thing from violence?’[1496] Reeling drunk with intolerance, even
Hamilton’s warning only coaxed a slight concession to liberty, and it was a
thoroughly vicious and tyrannical measure that was debated in the House.
These debates were conducted under conditions of disorder that would have
disgraced a discussion of brigands wrangling over a division of spoils in a
wayside cave. Gallatin, Livingston, and Nicholas were forced to talk against
coughs, laughter, conversation, and the scraping of the feet of the apostles of
‘law and order.’ No personal insult too foul, no nincompoop too insignificant
to sneer in the face of Gallatin. Despite these terrorizing tactics, the
Jeffersonians stood firm and made their record. Even the customary courtesy
of Gallatin deserted him, however, and when the sneering Harper darkly
hinted at traitors in the House, he retorted sharply that he knew ‘nothing in
the character of [Harper], either public or private, to entitle him to the
ground he so boldly assumes.’
On the last day of the debate on the Alien Bill, Edward Livingston closed
for the opposition; and in discussing the constitutional phase, he anticipated
the doctrine of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, indicating probable
conferences with the tall, silent man who was presiding over the Senate. ‘If
we are ready to violate the Constitution,’ he said, ‘will the people submit to
our unauthorized acts? Sir, they ought not to submit; they would deserve the
chains that these measures are forging for them.’ The effect of such a
measure? ‘The country will swarm with informers, spies, delators, and all
the odious reptile tribe that breed in the sunshine of despotic power.... The
hours of the most unsuspected confidence, the intimacies of friendship, or
the recesses of domestic retirement, afford no security. The companion
whom you must trust, the friend in whom you must confide, the domestic
who waits in your chamber, are all tempted to betray your imprudent or
unguarded follies; to misrepresent your words; to convey them, distorted by
calumny, to the secret tribunal where jealousy presides—where fear
officiates as accuser, and suspicion is the only evidence that is heard.... Do
not let us be told that we are to excite a fervor against a foreign aggression to
establish a tyranny at home; that like the arch traitor we cry “Hail
Columbia”[1497] at the moment we are betraying her to destruction; that we
sing, “Happy Land,” when we are plunging it in ruin and disgrace; and that
we are absurd enough to call ourselves free and enlightened while we
advocate principles that would have disgraced the age of Gothic
barbarity.’[1498]
The vote was taken and the Alien Bill passed, 46 to 40.
Livingston was to hear a few days later when the debate on the Sedition
Bill was reached that he had been guilty of sedition in his speech on the
Alien Bill. Not least among the grotesque features of the crazy times was the
prominence, amounting to leadership, attained by John Allen of Connecticut
—a tall, hectic, sour-visaged fanatic. It was reserved for him to indict the
Jeffersonians generally for sedition. Had not Livingston been guilty of
sedition when he proposed that Gerry be authorized to renew negotiations?
Was not the ‘Aurora’s’ explanation of the effect of the Alien Law upon the
Irish treason? Were not members of Congress who dared write their views to
their constituents traitors? From a want-wit like this fanatic such views were
more ludicrous than depressing, but Harper rose to give his full assent to the
buffoonery of Allen. ‘What!’ exclaimed Nicholas, ‘is it proposed to prevent
members from speaking what they please or prohibit them from reaching the
people with their views?’ And Harper, disclaiming any desire to curtail the
freedom of speech upon the floor, bravely admitted a desire to prevent the
speeches from reaching the people ‘out of doors.’ This astounding doctrine
brought Gallatin to his feet with a scornful denunciation of Allen’s criticism
of Cabell’s letter. It ‘contained more information and more sense than the
gentleman from Connecticut has displayed or can display.’ Taking up every
assertion in Cabell’s letter and making it his own, he challenged a denial of
its truth. Then, referring to the attack on Livingston’s speech, Gallatin gave
his full sanction to the New York statesman’s doctrine of resistance to
unconstitutional measures. ‘I believe that doctrine is absolutely correct and
neither seditious nor treasonable.’
On the last day Livingston spoke with his usual spirit and eloquence, and
Harper closed for the bill with an anti-climactic charge, apropos of nothing,
that the Jeffersonian plan of government was in the interest of ‘men of
immoderate ambition, great family connections, hereditary wealth, and
extensive influence’ like Livingston. ‘Great patrician families’ would walk
over the heads ‘of we plebeian people.’ This touching appeal for the
plebeians could hardly have been meant for Philadelphia where at that time
‘the great patricians’ were lavishly wining and dining the Harpers, and
rigidly excluding the Livingstons and Gallatins from their tables. Thus the
Federalists closed their case and the bill passed, 44 to 41.[1499]
The press was peculiarly silent through the debates. Russell in the Boston
‘Centinel’ observed that ‘Benedict Arnold complained bitterly of the treason
bill,’[1500] and his rival, Thomas Adams of the ‘Chronicle,’ announced the
passage with the comment that ‘we are now abridged the freedom of the
press.’[1501] Soon the ‘Commercial Advertiser’ of New York would be
dubbing all men traitors who criticized the Sedition Law, and Jefferson
would be inviting Hamilton Rowan to the sanctuary of Monticello with the
assurance that the Habeas Corpus Act was still operative in Virginia.[1502]
Almost immediately the Reign of Terror broke upon the land.
VI
In the midst of political terrors the yellow fever stalked again into the
haunts of men, striking in New York, in Boston, with special virulence in
Philadelphia. By the first of October, fourteen hundred had died in New
York City. Hamilton remained in town until persuaded by his family to go to
the country, but he continued to visit the city daily to confer with his
political friends.[1503] In Philadelphia those who could afford it took to
flight. Soon thousands were encamped in tents on the common on the
outskirts and by October not more than seven thousand people remained in
the stricken city. An English traveler, entering in September, found the
theaters, taverns, drinking-houses, gambling-dens, and dance-halls closed,
hospital carts moving slowly through abandoned streets, the casket-makers
alone busy. Sitting one night on the steps of a house in Arch Street, where
most houses were deserted, he could hear nothing but the groans of the
dying, the lamentations of the living, the hammers of the coffin-makers, the
dismal howling of deserted dogs.[1504] Even the physicians took to their
heels, but Dr. Rush, the head of his profession, remained to battle with the
disease.[1505] The health office was kept open day and night.[1506]
But even in the midst of death the politicians fought with scarcely
diminished ferocity. ‘Porcupine’ and Fenno were stooping to the ghastly
business of maligning the methods of Dr. Rush in treating the disease.
Standing heroically to his duty where others had fled, he was forced, day by
day, to read the most scurrilous attacks upon him. The animus was due to the
fact that Rush was a Jeffersonian; and even from Lisbon, William Smith
contributed his slur in a letter to Wolcott manifesting sympathy with the
attacks because he had ‘always considered the Doctor a wrong-headed
politician.’[1507] Bache and Fenno clawed on, amidst the dying and the dead,
until one September day the fever entered the Fenno house and struck down
both the editor and his wife. When she died, the ‘Gazette’ was suspended,
and the next day John Fenno ceased his attacks on Dr. Rush, for Death had
intervened.[1508] ‘Alas poor John Fenno,’ wrote Ames, ‘a worthy man, a true
Federalist, always firm in his principles, mild in maintaining them, and bitter
against foes. No printer was ever so correct in his politics.’[1509] A few days
later, Benjamin Franklin Bache of the ‘Aurora’ fought no more. The Boston
‘Chronicle’ announced his death in a black-bordered editorial lamenting ‘the
loss of a man of inflexible virtue, unappalled by power or persecution, and
who, in dying, knew no anxieties but what was excited by his apprehensions
for his country and for his young family.’[1510] The Jeffersonian press
published long articles and poems of tribute. In New York the Democrats
lost the services of Greenleaf of the ‘Argus,’ another victim of the plague.
John Ward Fenno took up the work of his father, and the widows of
Bache and Greenleaf sought to continue the ‘Aurora’ and the ‘Argus,’ the
former calling to her assistance one of the ablest controversial journalists of
his time, William Duane. No Jeffersonian papers made an unfeeling
reference to the death of Fenno; the passing of Bache was gloated over in
ghoulish fashion by the Federalist press, and soon ‘Porcupine’ and young
Fenno were making merry over ‘the widows Bache and Greenleaf.’ It was
part of the Reign of Terror—and the fight went on.
VII
VIII